The problem with developing Javascript code is that you are shooting at a moving target.
Unless the use is restricted to a highly controlled intranet setting it will be executed on an indeterminate set of runtime environments. Different browser vendors, different versions, different sub-builds... where does the madness end?
Unless you are doing something trivial you can wind up with several times the code necessary to get the job done on any one Javascript runtime. And bug testing? Well that takes far longer than it should for exactly the same reason.
I don't have a problem with the language itself. Or any one interpretation of the language to be more precise. But give me some solid footing.
Beef #2 - is your Javascript accessible to disabled users? Standard response: "F*** the disabled; they're a minority and we all know minorities deserve to be shot and pissed on." As I lack the Satanic vitriol necessary to punish people for unfortunate circumstances I find myself at odds with the Web 2.0 community.
ANY proprietary software I would prefer to have on another machine. (or at least another partition) That includes games, which are increasingly DRM'd and spyware laden.
That's just not going far enough...
We need a machine that presses your finger against the proper coordinates of the touch screen, using speech recognition software to determine your candidate. (For people who can't speak it takes a snapshot and presses "R" for people in suits, "D" for people with any appreciable amount of skin pigment, and for all the folks in Walmart clothes selects the candidate who ran the most scathing attack ads.) Then a printer prints out your suggestion. Another machine uses OCR to scan the print out. Then a speech synthesizer reads the scan out loud to you and you verify it by dilating your pupils into an eye scanner.
The eye scans would then be printed out and stored in a giant filing cabinet so that they could be trucked to central tally stations where they would be securely interpreted by a giant, infallible paper-eye-scan-scanning machine. When all the tallies were in it would send the results to a dialer which can phone everyone and tell them who won.
Because at all costs, we have to involve machines.
I assure you the US would have to absolutely and fundamentally abandon any of her redeeming characteristics for that to happen. Canada has troops ground-pounding the hostile environs of southern Afghanistan as a sign of solidarity with her allies, very much including the US. Besides issues of loyalty, the losses to such a superior adversary would be fantastic. While not capable of singlehandedly repelling an organized invasion by the greater powers overseas, the Canadian forces train scenarios where they assist the US (and vice-versa) in preventing exactly such an eventually.
> the Detroit police force would arrest the Canadian military before they got out of the tunnel.
lol. When WWII hit Canada stopped everything else and raised a military comprising 10% of the population, including the largest volunteer army in the conflict. (whose ranks included a number of proud US citizens who couldn't wait for their own government to enter the fray) The US military would beat Canada soundly, the Detroit police wouldn't stand a chance.
For those of you who wonder why we (Canucks) are so self-congratulatory allow me to explain:
We are the only nation on earth who borders no one else but the most powerful country in the world. We live and die under the shadow of the United States. In fact many parts of the world view us as the little brother of the US. So like a little brother we are always looking for something that proves our importance. Even better if we find one or two things we can do better than big brother. (this article not a good example of such) We are always looking for acknowlegement.
Also like a little brother we aren't taken seriously, even on those occasions we might have something good to say. "Shut up and let the grown-ups talk, little guy..."
Personally I am a fan of honest criticism and not bowing to the greater powers when it's not appropriate. That part makes me proud to be Canadian. But I'm not a fan of merely insulting the greater powers. Isn't that a form of intolerance? But just so you know, when you're a little brother you mouth off quite a bit but deep down you can't change the fact you love your older brother. You just don't like to admit those things out loud.
Man, when we were kids our parents practically encouraged us to get hurt.
They gave us *woodburning pencils* for Christmas. Oh, it wasn't enough to give a little boy a sharp object - it wasn't a real toy unless it also heated to 500 degrees.
A conversation at my friend's house:
Q: "Dad, we need some nails to build a rocket ship." A: "You kids can use anything you find in the junk pile. Just don't use my fresh lumber."
In the end he even provided a rusty saw we could use to cut panels for the nose cone.
To be more specific: OSS games are fine. It's the closed source games you cannot guarantee.
Users and businesses alike need to figure out the only way to know with 100% certainty that you are spyware free is to use open source. Exclusively. To run closed source software on Linux, as newbie users normally wish to do, is hardly better than running it on Windows. I know. I was in that camp myself before I really caught on to the whole ownership thing.
Work stations, and anything handling sensitive data, should be pure OSS. Play on a different system altogether. I use a console. Same with anything DRM - runs on a different device than my work.
Actually there ARE a lot of people who dislike Bush and abhor Chavez. We can all be ignorant and paint each other with broad "my side is pure light and yours is pure evil" simplistic nonsense. Of course not everyone on the right wants another Adolf Hitler. Of course not everyone on the left wants a Hugo Chavez.
p.s. The fact that Chavez is a horrible dictator doesn't change the fact that Bush is a terrible president.
One of the things that continues to make Microsoft so dominant is that their early adoption allowed them to be the entity which defines how we view computing and the development of computing solutions.
So much initial frustration with alternative software models like OSS stems from this impedence mismatch. I speak from personal experience here.
For example, Qt is not primarily designed to be a low-cost alternative to Microsoft development tools. It is designed to achieve a flexiblity the Microsoft product cannot match.
So the question is goals. If the primary goal is to save money one can take the Qt example and put a twist on it. For example GTK can be used with your choice of C, C++, python, Java, perl, php, etc. wxWidgets has a similar list. Then there's the obvious example of Java using Swing or SWT. All of these are in fact used in commercial products, especially Java. Some research should reveal a choice which has been proven acceptible in the real world whether or not it subscribes to the exact support model you had in mind going in.
The 2x4's I pick up at the hardware store come with no guarantee but I have seen enough real world examples to have a good idea what kind of reliability I can expect from them.
If, on the other hand, official support is your primary goal you will need to take the advice given in previous posts and be sure to compare apples to apples. Perhaps a support-level/cost analysis will sway you toward OSS in one situation and toward proprietary software in another.
> The general tone of your post is the same as the younger brother ascribing the virtues of being a bookworm to the class when he doesn't have to defend himself in the school hallways.
First: it IS nice to have an older brother. I know you don't hear this a lot but thanks for being there.
Secondly: there ARE virtues to being a bookworm.:)
Right click and select "Show Hidden Files". No visual clue to the user that functionality or the ability to enter paths directly exists.
How stupid is that? Now that I know that stuff is there I do prefer this dialogue with its breadcrumbs and vertical scrolling, but come on, they should have given me some cue it was there before I started yelling at them.
> 1) It's dog slow when you type paths.
Bang on. Slow is a word one uses a lot around Gnome and GTK.
That depends what you are moving for - what your goal is.
One comment we often hear after an immigrant has been in the country a couple of years is that the media presents them with a broader view of what is going on. That is true but I also have to think there's nothing preventing an American from subscribing to a good news channel. CBC is good and BBC seems better, frankly.
If you are looking for a more enlightened society Canada may have the highest rate of post secondary education of any nation but I can assure you we still manage to be immature at times. We need to grow up too.
If you are looking for a government which incites less hostility abroad, well we certainly don't have the power to incite as much hostility. Our commitment to diplomacy may stem in part, large or small, from that fact and not just from some innate "moral superiority".
If you are looking for a place you can put your canoe in the water and paddle a thousand miles of wilderness, you've found it. If you've never stood on a frozen lake on a winter's night, a bright frost halo encircling the moon, heard the thick ice groaning like a sleeping giant and felt it shudder beneath your feet, well you should.
To sum it up: there are moments I am proud to be Canadian and other moments I am genuinely ashamed of something we've done. You will no doubt feel the same about your present home. Some people love moving here and some hate it. I suggest you weigh the pros and cons.
Have you considered any of the Scandinavian nations? (also great hockey players)
Object relational mapping is embedded in software released by EVERY major company.
Microsoft IBM Oracle Sun Microsystems etc.
They sue REDHAT?!?
So what, Redhat is the *richest* opportunity here? Redhat is the most *obvious* offender? The most *long-standing* offender? The most *widely-distributed* offender. What? What, except the only OSS company in that list!
Oh yes, it's conspiracy, plain and simple. This is a case of bad men being backed by bad men with deep pockets to go after the most UNLIKELY target. This is SCO round 2. Bullshit, prior art, will lose in the court of law but will do a tonne of damage to OSS; SCO round 2.
This is another case of rich men with no souls, go to church but prefer Satan, gang up on kind hearted people and volunteers, bullies without conscience, without love, without patriotism, without decency or virtue, pure waste of organic nutrients which could have gone to make something useful like earthworms, festering turds on lawn of humanity type men just doing what they do to those with less money and aspirations of helping humanity WITHOUT FIRST STEPPING ON PEOPLE'S THROATS TO EXTORT YOUR BILLIONS like some other notable "philanthropists" of our time.
Hearing slashdotters arguing different ways that cars with combustion engines can still beat electric cars is proof of how much electric cars have advanced - enough to spark some feeling of competition. It is also a sad lack of imagination.
Modern combustion engines benefit from generations of research, billions of dollars investment and an unmatched manufacturing scale. All of which ensure both a highly slanted field in any comparison and prices that cannot yet be matched by alternatives.
I swear it's sounding like a bunch of grumpy old men objecting to these new-fangled changes in here.
If we get the brain trust on board we can address the challenges. With some imagination we can also re-think the logistics of travel rather than simply trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
You mock the challenges still ahead but remember that the public didn't believe an electric car could begin to compete with combustion cars on speed. Fast electric cars are good optics which inspire public confidence. Make no mistake, this vehicle is a step.
Wish I could mod your comment up but someone else will have to do that for me.
What is the issue Carmack is addressing then? (I'm not implying, like some, that he's the be-all of the industry, but he is certainly significant.) Is he wishing for a standard between consoles? Does his concern stem from the fact he has always supported PC's?
One of the primary arguments open source is being forced to prove in the face of criticism is that it can generate revenue. As you have pointed out, for people concerned about free alternatives there are numerous help avenues already.
But if the ideology of open source software were ever to stipulate that no one should profit in the IT industry it would necessarily become the domain of hobbyists alone. Ubuntu would become a force for destruction, causing massive lay-offs in the IT industry the more popular it became. I suspect that is not their goal.
From a business perspective a free product or service can only generate revenue if it is used to sell a complimentary product or service. So for IBM open source is great because it allows them to sell support services. Novell has their network and domain tools. Hardware vendors can use it to reduce prices while maintaining profits. Custom programmers profit greatly from open source because it supplies them with tools for their trade. So too with network and system admins, etc. If every one of us were asked to work for free we would, of course, have to move to other lines of employment.
So for someone to publish a book is proof of concept for what we open source fans have been arguing against Bill and all the other nay-sayers, namely that open source software can generate business. If we do not allow for business in our model then he and all our other detractors will have been proven right.
re: Bell, Isn't it so typical of a Canadian to steal the thunder for someone else's hard work? Talk about a nation of low-down, snivelling, back-stabbing weasels. Smart folk lock up their daughters when those cheating Canucks are around.
BTW - did I ever mention that I invented the internet mere hourse before Al Gore? (A surprising number of people don't realize the web was born in Moose Jaw) The queen is going to knight me for sure...
We are crippled by the whole "right wing / left wing" paradigm. As if there are only two ways of solving a problem and as if the range of challenges were so simple as to merit only one approach, all the time.
But this is what you get with partisan politics. What's worse is that affiliation ends free thought. It's not longer "what do _I_ think about that" but rather "what does the _party_ think about that?" What's worse is that problems are not studied on a case by case basis, rather simplistic, canned solutions are offered to all.
An anology from when I was a heavy duty mechanic:
It occured to me that most bolts/nuts are "right hand" threaded, i.e. turned clockwise to tighten. But some are "left hand" threaded. Can you imagine a partisan mechanic working on your machine? You bring your bulldozer in and I start turning loose bolts clockwise to tighten them. Turns out one or two are left hand threaded. At that point I have a choice to make: am I wise and humble enough to realize I've been making a mistake and start turning the other way, or do I stubbornly keep cranking the one and only way I believe in and let the whole machine fall apart?
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with developing Javascript code is that you are shooting at a moving target.
Unless the use is restricted to a highly controlled intranet setting it will be executed on an indeterminate set of runtime environments. Different browser vendors, different versions, different sub-builds... where does the madness end?
Unless you are doing something trivial you can wind up with several times the code necessary to get the job done on any one Javascript runtime. And bug testing? Well that takes far longer than it should for exactly the same reason.
I don't have a problem with the language itself. Or any one interpretation of the language to be more precise. But give me some solid footing.
Beef #2 - is your Javascript accessible to disabled users? Standard response: "F*** the disabled; they're a minority and we all know minorities deserve to be shot and pissed on." As I lack the Satanic vitriol necessary to punish people for unfortunate circumstances I find myself at odds with the Web 2.0 community.
> On one hand, web 2.0 AJAX sites are cool, on the other hand, AJAX makes me throw-up a little bit in my mouth every time I type it's name.
You are my new hero... (I couldn't agree more)
My RSS aggregator cut out after the word "president":
I was hoping it would be about a chess match between Kasparov and Bush!
ANY proprietary software I would prefer to have on another machine. (or at least another partition) That includes games, which are increasingly DRM'd and spyware laden.
That's just not going far enough... We need a machine that presses your finger against the proper coordinates of the touch screen, using speech recognition software to determine your candidate. (For people who can't speak it takes a snapshot and presses "R" for people in suits, "D" for people with any appreciable amount of skin pigment, and for all the folks in Walmart clothes selects the candidate who ran the most scathing attack ads.) Then a printer prints out your suggestion. Another machine uses OCR to scan the print out. Then a speech synthesizer reads the scan out loud to you and you verify it by dilating your pupils into an eye scanner. The eye scans would then be printed out and stored in a giant filing cabinet so that they could be trucked to central tally stations where they would be securely interpreted by a giant, infallible paper-eye-scan-scanning machine. When all the tallies were in it would send the results to a dialer which can phone everyone and tell them who won. Because at all costs, we have to involve machines.
> Arguing about whether it was right for the US to invade Iraq is rather academic now
Arguing about whether it was right for Hitler to invade Poland is rather academic now
It is, however, awfully pertinent.
> If Canada sides against the US
I assure you the US would have to absolutely and fundamentally abandon any of her redeeming characteristics for that to happen. Canada has troops ground-pounding the hostile environs of southern Afghanistan as a sign of solidarity with her allies, very much including the US. Besides issues of loyalty, the losses to such a superior adversary would be fantastic. While not capable of singlehandedly repelling an organized invasion by the greater powers overseas, the Canadian forces train scenarios where they assist the US (and vice-versa) in preventing exactly such an eventually.
> the Detroit police force would arrest the Canadian military before they got out of the tunnel.
lol. When WWII hit Canada stopped everything else and raised a military comprising 10% of the population, including the largest volunteer army in the conflict. (whose ranks included a number of proud US citizens who couldn't wait for their own government to enter the fray) The US military would beat Canada soundly, the Detroit police wouldn't stand a chance.
For those of you who wonder why we (Canucks) are so self-congratulatory allow me to explain:
We are the only nation on earth who borders no one else but the most powerful country in the world. We live and die under the shadow of the United States. In fact many parts of the world view us as the little brother of the US. So like a little brother we are always looking for something that proves our importance. Even better if we find one or two things we can do better than big brother. (this article not a good example of such) We are always looking for acknowlegement.
Also like a little brother we aren't taken seriously, even on those occasions we might have something good to say. "Shut up and let the grown-ups talk, little guy..."
Personally I am a fan of honest criticism and not bowing to the greater powers when it's not appropriate. That part makes me proud to be Canadian. But I'm not a fan of merely insulting the greater powers. Isn't that a form of intolerance? But just so you know, when you're a little brother you mouth off quite a bit but deep down you can't change the fact you love your older brother. You just don't like to admit those things out loud.
Man, when we were kids our parents practically encouraged us to get hurt.
They gave us *woodburning pencils* for Christmas. Oh, it wasn't enough to give a little boy a sharp object - it wasn't a real toy unless it also heated to 500 degrees.
A conversation at my friend's house:
Q: "Dad, we need some nails to build a rocket ship."
A: "You kids can use anything you find in the junk pile. Just don't use my fresh lumber."
In the end he even provided a rusty saw we could use to cut panels for the nose cone.
Do they even sell band-aids anymore?
Or MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, etc. etc.
To be more specific: OSS games are fine. It's the closed source games you cannot guarantee.
Users and businesses alike need to figure out the only way to know with 100% certainty that you are spyware free is to use open source. Exclusively. To run closed source software on Linux, as newbie users normally wish to do, is hardly better than running it on Windows. I know. I was in that camp myself before I really caught on to the whole ownership thing.
Work stations, and anything handling sensitive data, should be pure OSS. Play on a different system altogether. I use a console. Same with anything DRM - runs on a different device than my work.
"Where on the mainstream left are they speaking out against Chavez?"
Actually there ARE a lot of people who dislike Bush and abhor Chavez. We can all be ignorant and paint each other with broad "my side is pure light and yours is pure evil" simplistic nonsense. Of course not everyone on the right wants another Adolf Hitler. Of course not everyone on the left wants a Hugo Chavez.
p.s. The fact that Chavez is a horrible dictator doesn't change the fact that Bush is a terrible president.
One of the things that continues to make Microsoft so dominant is that their early adoption allowed them to be the entity which defines how we view computing and the development of computing solutions.
So much initial frustration with alternative software models like OSS stems from this impedence mismatch. I speak from personal experience here.
For example, Qt is not primarily designed to be a low-cost alternative to Microsoft development tools. It is designed to achieve a flexiblity the Microsoft product cannot match.
So the question is goals. If the primary goal is to save money one can take the Qt example and put a twist on it. For example GTK can be used with your choice of C, C++, python, Java, perl, php, etc. wxWidgets has a similar list. Then there's the obvious example of Java using Swing or SWT. All of these are in fact used in commercial products, especially Java. Some research should reveal a choice which has been proven acceptible in the real world whether or not it subscribes to the exact support model you had in mind going in.
The 2x4's I pick up at the hardware store come with no guarantee but I have seen enough real world examples to have a good idea what kind of reliability I can expect from them.
If, on the other hand, official support is your primary goal you will need to take the advice given in previous posts and be sure to compare apples to apples. Perhaps a support-level/cost analysis will sway you toward OSS in one situation and toward proprietary software in another.
> The general tone of your post is the same as the younger brother ascribing the virtues of being a bookworm to the class when he doesn't have to defend himself in the school hallways.
:)
First: it IS nice to have an older brother. I know you don't hear this a lot but thanks for being there.
Secondly: there ARE virtues to being a bookworm.
> 2) There is no way to view hidden menus.
Right click and select "Show Hidden Files". No visual clue to the user that functionality or the ability to enter paths directly exists.
How stupid is that? Now that I know that stuff is there I do prefer this dialogue with its breadcrumbs and vertical scrolling, but come on, they should have given me some cue it was there before I started yelling at them.
> 1) It's dog slow when you type paths.
Bang on. Slow is a word one uses a lot around Gnome and GTK.
That depends what you are moving for - what your goal is.
One comment we often hear after an immigrant has been in the country a couple of years is that the media presents them with a broader view of what is going on. That is true but I also have to think there's nothing preventing an American from subscribing to a good news channel. CBC is good and BBC seems better, frankly.
If you are looking for a more enlightened society Canada may have the highest rate of post secondary education of any nation but I can assure you we still manage to be immature at times. We need to grow up too.
If you are looking for a government which incites less hostility abroad, well we certainly don't have the power to incite as much hostility. Our commitment to diplomacy may stem in part, large or small, from that fact and not just from some innate "moral superiority".
If you are looking for a place you can put your canoe in the water and paddle a thousand miles of wilderness, you've found it. If you've never stood on a frozen lake on a winter's night, a bright frost halo encircling the moon, heard the thick ice groaning like a sleeping giant and felt it shudder beneath your feet, well you should.
To sum it up: there are moments I am proud to be Canadian and other moments I am genuinely ashamed of something we've done. You will no doubt feel the same about your present home. Some people love moving here and some hate it. I suggest you weigh the pros and cons.
Have you considered any of the Scandinavian nations? (also great hockey players)
Object relational mapping is embedded in software released by EVERY major company.
Microsoft
IBM
Oracle
Sun Microsystems
etc.
They sue REDHAT?!?
So what, Redhat is the *richest* opportunity here? Redhat is the most *obvious* offender? The most *long-standing* offender? The most *widely-distributed* offender. What? What, except the only OSS company in that list!
Oh yes, it's conspiracy, plain and simple. This is a case of bad men being backed by bad men with deep pockets to go after the most UNLIKELY target. This is SCO round 2. Bullshit, prior art, will lose in the court of law but will do a tonne of damage to OSS; SCO round 2.
This is another case of rich men with no souls, go to church but prefer Satan, gang up on kind hearted people and volunteers, bullies without conscience, without love, without patriotism, without decency or virtue, pure waste of organic nutrients which could have gone to make something useful like earthworms, festering turds on lawn of humanity type men just doing what they do to those with less money and aspirations of helping humanity WITHOUT FIRST STEPPING ON PEOPLE'S THROATS TO EXTORT YOUR BILLIONS like some other notable "philanthropists" of our time.
Hearing slashdotters arguing different ways that cars with combustion engines can still beat electric cars is proof of how much electric cars have advanced - enough to spark some feeling of competition. It is also a sad lack of imagination.
Modern combustion engines benefit from generations of research, billions of dollars investment and an unmatched manufacturing scale. All of which ensure both a highly slanted field in any comparison and prices that cannot yet be matched by alternatives.
I swear it's sounding like a bunch of grumpy old men objecting to these new-fangled changes in here.
If we get the brain trust on board we can address the challenges. With some imagination we can also re-think the logistics of travel rather than simply trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
You mock the challenges still ahead but remember that the public didn't believe an electric car could begin to compete with combustion cars on speed. Fast electric cars are good optics which inspire public confidence. Make no mistake, this vehicle is a step.
Wish I could mod your comment up but someone else will have to do that for me.
What is the issue Carmack is addressing then? (I'm not implying, like some, that he's the be-all of the industry, but he is certainly significant.) Is he wishing for a standard between consoles? Does his concern stem from the fact he has always supported PC's?
John Carmack was recently interviewed regarding the new multicore game consoles. One of the more memorable quotes:
"...Anything that makes the game development process more difficult is not a terribly good thing."
One of the primary arguments open source is being forced to prove in the face of criticism is that it can generate revenue. As you have pointed out, for people concerned about free alternatives there are numerous help avenues already.
But if the ideology of open source software were ever to stipulate that no one should profit in the IT industry it would necessarily become the domain of hobbyists alone. Ubuntu would become a force for destruction, causing massive lay-offs in the IT industry the more popular it became. I suspect that is not their goal.
From a business perspective a free product or service can only generate revenue if it is used to sell a complimentary product or service. So for IBM open source is great because it allows them to sell support services. Novell has their network and domain tools. Hardware vendors can use it to reduce prices while maintaining profits. Custom programmers profit greatly from open source because it supplies them with tools for their trade. So too with network and system admins, etc. If every one of us were asked to work for free we would, of course, have to move to other lines of employment.
So for someone to publish a book is proof of concept for what we open source fans have been arguing against Bill and all the other nay-sayers, namely that open source software can generate business. If we do not allow for business in our model then he and all our other detractors will have been proven right.
"Wouldn't want to live there tho."
Have you SEEN the women in iceland? Not to mention the haunting arctic landscapes...
re: Bell, Isn't it so typical of a Canadian to steal the thunder for someone else's hard work? Talk about a nation of low-down, snivelling, back-stabbing weasels. Smart folk lock up their daughters when those cheating Canucks are around.
BTW - did I ever mention that I invented the internet mere hourse before Al Gore? (A surprising number of people don't realize the web was born in Moose Jaw) The queen is going to knight me for sure...
We are crippled by the whole "right wing / left wing" paradigm. As if there are only two ways of solving a problem and as if the range of challenges were so simple as to merit only one approach, all the time.
But this is what you get with partisan politics. What's worse is that affiliation ends free thought. It's not longer "what do _I_ think about that" but rather "what does the _party_ think about that?" What's worse is that problems are not studied on a case by case basis, rather simplistic, canned solutions are offered to all.
An anology from when I was a heavy duty mechanic:
It occured to me that most bolts/nuts are "right hand" threaded, i.e. turned clockwise to tighten. But some are "left hand" threaded. Can you imagine a partisan mechanic working on your machine? You bring your bulldozer in and I start turning loose bolts clockwise to tighten them. Turns out one or two are left hand threaded. At that point I have a choice to make: am I wise and humble enough to realize I've been making a mistake and start turning the other way, or do I stubbornly keep cranking the one and only way I believe in and let the whole machine fall apart?
Yeah, good point. Could even like like...
...although I prefer not to use short tags in the interest of XML compliance. (The parser will try to parse XML declaration tags.)